How one of the world’s largest banks is using skills intelligence to lead digital change

Meet the customer: A global banking leader

This global bank is one of the largest financial institutions in the world, offering services in commercial banking, retail banking, wealth management, and investment banking.

With 275,000 employees and operations in over 60 countries, the bank focuses on corporate finance, digital banking solutions, and international trade. However, digital disruption and emerging technologies are rapidly changing workforce requirements—forcing the bank to rethink how it attracts, develops, and retains talent.

To stay ahead, the bank committed to becoming an engineering-led, technology-driven organization. The challenge? Its workforce wasn’t ready for the shift.

To stay ahead, we needed more than ambition; we needed a workforce ready for the future

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The challenge: A workforce not aligned with digital ambitions

The bank’s 30,000-strong tech workforce sits at the heart of its digital transformation, but HR leaders identified major obstacles:

1. Skills gaps in critical areas

• Cloud and data analytics skills shortages slowed transformation efforts
• Too few highly skilled technical roles, while manual data risk control tasks remained overstaffed

2. No single source of truth for skills

• Skills data was scattered across HRIS, LMS, and talent tools, making workforce planning inconsistent and inefficient
• HR and business leaders lacked a clear, objective understanding of current workforce capabilities

3. High turnover and workforce overload

• Tech teams were overloaded and experiencing high attrition, leading to talent shortages
• Without real-time skills data, internal mobility was limited, and external hiring costs increased

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With 275,000 employees, 30,000 technology professionals, and a highly complex job architecture, the bank needed to take a step back. They looked for a vendor that could ‘get their house in order’ before being able to serve the business needs. 

To move beyond job titles and experience-based hiring, the bank needed a structured, AI-driven approach to skills intelligence.

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Partnering with TechWolf allowed us to move beyond job titles and experience-based hiring, giving us real-time skills intelligence to align talent with our business strategy

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The TechWolf solution: A data-first approach to workforce skills

To address these challenges, the bank partnered with TechWolf to create an AI-powered skills infrastructure that would provide:

• A real-time, structured skills taxonomy
• A unified skills data foundation across the entire workforce
• AI-driven insights to guide workforce planning and internal mobility

The collaboration followed a three-phase approach to build, validate, and scale skills intelligence across the enterprise.

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"We knew that digital transformation required more than just new technology—it demanded a fundamental shift in our workforce capabilities. Partnering with TechWolf allowed us to move beyond job titles and experience-based hiring, giving us real-time skills intelligence to align talent with our business strategy."

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Phase 1: Establishing a skills data foundation

The first step was structuring workforce data and building a real-time skills intelligence platform:

• A data maturity scan ensured workforce data was structured, high-quality, and AI-ready
• A new skills taxonomy created a single source of truth, covering 18 skill domains, 48 subdomains, and 398 skill clusters
• Job-to-skill mapping structured data on 2,547 job roles, linking jobs to skills accurately
• Validated skill profiles were generated for 30,000+ technology employees, providing visibility into workforce capabilities

This skills intelligence foundation became the backbone for workforce planning, hiring, and internal mobility.

Phase 2: Driving business value

With an AI-driven skills intelligence platform in place, the bank could now:

• Strategic Workforce Planning: Use real-time skills data to align talent with business priorities and model future workforce needs
• Internal Mobility and Talent Development: AI-powered matching enabled reskilling and upskilling, ensuring employees could transition into high-demand roles
• Accelerating Cloud Adoption: The bank identified employees with cloud-related skills and prioritized them for targeted upskilling, reducing external hiring costs

Phase 3: Scaling

With a fully operational skills intelligence platform, the bank is now expanding its AI-driven workforce strategy to:

• Cover all strategic business units beyond IT
• Improve global workforce mobility by matching employees to open roles based on skills
• Align skills development with long-term business needs, ensuring continuous workforce readiness through 2028

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The Impact: Data driven Workforce Transformation

The results speak for themselves:

250,000+ employees mapped in just five months

TechWolf’s AI mapped workforce skills at scale, covering 2,547 job roles and generating 30,000+ skill profiles for tech employees.

Strategic Workforce Planning for the future

The bank is now using skills intelligence to model future workforce needs through 2028, ensuring it has the right talent in place to drive digital transformation.

£5-10M in cost savings through internal mobility

By redeploying and reskilling 1,000+ employees, the bank reduced external hiring costs by an estimated £5-10M, providing a major return on investment.

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What’s Next? Scaling workforce intelligence

With strategic workforce planning fully underway, the next phase of transformation will focus on:

• Bank-wide workforce optimization: Expanding skills intelligence to 60,000+ operations employees to improve internal mobility
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• Cloud adoption acceleration: Identifying employees with cloud-related skills and implementing targeted upskilling programs
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• Enhancing compliance and risk mitigation: Using skills intelligence to personalize learning programs for financial crime and risk teams

By embedding AI-driven skills intelligence into workforce decision-making, the bank is future-proofing its workforce for the next decade.

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